Elias Khoury - Broken Mirrors

The magical relationship between oil and Islam had never before occurred to Karim. Poor Khaled Nabulsi! He’d joined a fundamentalist Islam that had no oil so as to complete the revolution, and his body had been ripped to pieces — after which the revolution had continued on its course without him and his like! The revolutions of the day were in need of oil wells. Money oils everything and is “the adornment of this present life,” as it says in the Koran.

For his part, Karim had no idea how to respond to the sheikh’s offer. The man was kind and didn’t insist, telling the doctor that he was one of the People of the Book, “and the People of the Book are under our protection.” He said he’d only wanted to honor him with the best possible offer; however, there was “no compulsion in religion.”

Nasim thought medicine was Lebanon’s oil and that through the hospital that he’d decided to build he would be able finally to put his relationship to the war behind him and start a new life as a respectable businessman.

In no way then would he resemble the thug who’d risked his life for every penny he harvested from the fruits of war. But the hospital needed a certain deal to go through before it could be completed. And when Karim tried to inquire about the nature of that deal his brother said it was nothing to do with him; his job now was to wait, draw up the plans, and supervise the preparations. The wait was long. Six months of nothing, of wasted time, of abortive affairs that left only a bitter taste on his tongue.

When Ghazala appeared, in all her glory, Karim’s body was filled with tremors of desire such as he had never realized lay concealed in the darkness of his soul. He started with the lust to rape and ended a total captive to this terrifyingly beautiful woman; he told her her beauty was “terrifying” because he could find no more suitable word to describe it.

She came the first time on a Tuesday morning and said she would come twice a week, in accordance with the instructions she had received from Khawaja Nasim. She didn’t specify which days, and Karim had to wait since he didn’t dare to ask.

She came on Thursday, but not early, as he’d expected. It was about eleven thirty a.m. and Karim had grown fed up with waiting. He’d agreed to have lunch with Ahmad Dakiz so that they could discuss things to do with the building. She came, resplendent, her dark face shining above her long neck, her black hair tied behind in a ponytail, wearing a dress that reached just below her knees. She rang the bell and waited, and when she saw Karim she smiled and said she’d meant to come early but was late because she’d had to visit a sick friend. She entered and a musky perfume erupted from her rustling dress. She left him holding the door and went into the kitchen.

He didn’t know what to do. Should he go after her or go to the living room, open a book, and pretend to read? He went to the living room and phoned Ahmad Dakiz to apologize for not being able to accept his invitation to lunch, saying he was involved in an emergency. He sensed she was listening to the call but didn’t care. He sat on the couch, opened the first book he found in front of him, and pretended to read.

The smell of coffee wafted in. Ghazala brought the coffee tray and poured two cups. He took his cup with trembling hand, drank a drop, and felt the catch of the bitter coffee as it spread over his tongue and through his mouth. She took her cup and bent forward, as though about to set off for the kitchen.

“Sit down and drink your coffee with me.”

He shifted to make room for her next to him on the couch but she knelt, sat cross-legged on the floor, took a sip from her cup, and made a motion with her fingers, as though she were holding a cigarette.

Karim took a cigarette, placed it between his lips, lit it, and gave it to her. Then he took a second cigarette to light for himself.

“No, you don’t have to light another. I don’t usually smoke but I just happened to think of a cigarette now, I don’t know why.”

They smoked the same cigarette in silence. She put her hand on the couch to get up and he took hold of it. Instead of helping her rise he fell to the floor and found himself rolling over her body. When Karim thought back to how things started he’d tell himself she’d pulled him down and he’d found himself lying on the floor without having decided to before the fact. But the point isn’t who started it: the beginning had been already sketched out to the rhythm of the smell of musk that wafted from the edges of the wine-colored dress that covered her body.

The story began on the living room floor, on the red carpet put there in place of the Persian rug Nasri had so angrily stamped on, swearing the damned thing would outlast him by many years. On that pale red carpet Karim Shammas discovered he was still a novice when it came to the art of love. There he learned to sip the woman drop by drop and melt before her. With his eyes and all his senses he saw how the dew covered Ghazala’s body and how she entered his insides as he entered her and how desire renewed itself at the moment of its quenching.

Ghazala’s nakedness glittered on the floor, and instead of him taking and entering her, she took him. When they took off their clothes, he asked that they move to the bed. She said no with her eyebrows raised and pulled him to herself. He tried to lift her legs so that he could enter and she pushed him away, then with a motion of her finger ordered him to lie on his back and close his eyes. The man closed them in surrender as a sensual thrill spread to every part of his body. She swept his whole body with her long hair, kissed him, kneaded him, panted above him, inundated him with the water that sprang from her, whispered and sang, and, when she let him enter, he was released inside her like a slow musical refrain.

She was hot and tender, aflame and glowing, knowing when and how and what. The smoothness of her skin enveloped him and the strength of her desire melted into a diaphanous film of sorrow that covered her eyes. Her soft moaning entered his pores and her groans of pleasure mingled with the evaporation of his will.

Karim was incapable of describing the feelings that possessed him on the living room floor, or what exactly happened or how. On reaching one peak of pleasure he would find another waiting for him, but he didn’t have to climb the peak in order to arrive, for it spread from the ends of the hair on his head to his fingertips.

Karim found himself in the bathroom. Ghazala filled the tub with hot water, slipped into the water, and held out her hands; he slid toward her and found himself immersed in water and soap. In the bathtub he closed his eyes and began learning to read the woman lying before him with his fingertips. He caressed the smooth skin that made of her chest a mirror covered with the warm exhalation that arose from her pear-shaped breasts, which hung down in a slight curve before being lifted once more by the eruption of pomegranate blossom. He discovered the neck and shoulders, then descended to the buttocks and caressed what lay between her thighs, which gleamed with soap, and when he reached the cracked heels he caught fire again. He tried to slip inside her but Ghazala stood up, turned on the shower, and began roaring with laughter.

Karim, enchanted by what he believed was a rare moment of genuine encounter between two bodies, still had his eyes closed, and Ghazala’s guffaws as she swayed naked beneath the shower took him by surprise. He held out his hand, calling her to him again, and heard her tell him to get out of the tub because she was hungry.

“What do you feel like eating?” she asked.

He told her he wasn’t hungry and wanted to stay where he was. She jumped out of the tub, dried herself, and ran into the living room, where she put on her clothes, and he heard her summon him to the table.